—whether by its passage into hearts or into written pages—; and that Moses heard the speech of Allah without sound or letter (1), just as His Essence will be beheld without shape or color; that by death He separates souls from bodies, then restores them to their bodies at the Gathering, and will resurrect those who lie in the graves.
The Scale that weighs deeds is a standard referred to as a “scale,” although it is not the same as a scale that measures physical weight—such as the solar scale, or the ruler that serves as the scale for lines, or ʿarūḍ (Arabic prosody), the scale for verse.
I said: Rather, the Scale of deeds has two pans, as is reported in the Sahih (2). Most of this creed is correct; some parts I have not understood, and some of it is a matter of dispute among the scholars.
(1) In the treatise al-Fiqh al-Akbar ascribed to Abu Hanifa: “The Quran is written in the masahif, safeguarded in hearts, recited on tongues, revealed to the Prophet, and our articulation of the Quran is created, whereas the Quran itself is uncreated. Whatever Allah reports in the Quran about Musa and others, or about Pharaoh and Iblis, is Allah’s own speech conveying information about them; the speech of Musa and the other creatures is created. The Quran is Allah’s speech, not theirs. Musa heard the speech of Allah Most High; when Allah spoke to him, He addressed him with His own speech, an eternal attribute. All of His attributes differ from those of created beings: He knows, but not like our knowing; He is able, but not like our ability; He sees, but not like our seeing; He speaks, but not like our speaking.” Al-Alusi states in his commentary Ruh al-Maani 1/17: “The final word of the leading scholars, such as al-Maturidi, al-Ashari and other investigators, is that Musa heard the speech of Allah Most High with actual letters and sound, as is affirmed by texts so numerous that they preclude reinterpretation. Allah says: ‘We called to him from the right side of the Mount,’ ‘When your Lord called Musa,’ ‘He was called from the right bank of the valley,’ and ‘His Lord called him in the sacred valley, Tuwa.’ According to both Arabic usage and the hadiths, nidaʾ denotes sound; indeed, the attribution of sound to Allah Most High is affirmed in countless reports.”
(2) The term mizan (the Balance) occurs in the Quran and in sound hadiths. As the author notes, the two pans (al-kaffatan) are not mentioned in the rigorously authentic collections; they are found only in Musnad Ahmad 2/213, Tirmidhi 2641, and Ibn Majah 4300 in the hadith of Abd Allah b. Amr b. al-As. The chain is sound, and it was authenticated by Ibn Hibban (no. 2534) and al-Hakim 1/529, with al-Dhahabi concurring. See also Ibn Kathir, al-Nihaya 2/24, and our edition of Ibn Abi al-Izz, Sharh al-Aqida al-Tahawiyya, pp. 409–413.